These Four Walls
by Kate C. Massery
Summary: What it feels like to be hemmed in and surrounded by something that you fear...A little something that I cooked up spur of the moment, so hopefully its not bad. R&R please.


Four walls, flashes of white, gray in the corners…_Wheel and turn, step, step, step, stop. Wheel and turn, step, step, step, stop_. Too small. Four walls, flashes of white, gray in the corners…Eyes dart to the side, expecting to see a sheen of silver there, something real and at least tangible to take the place of the thing that was stalking him through his mind…stalking about in this too small space. Hands grip at his sides, nails digging into his palms. _Wheel and turn, step, step, step, stop. Walls again, soft, pliable, bendable, even breakable…__Breakable like me. _Wheel and turn, step, step, step, stop._ A padded shoulder meets padded wall, and they converse, but the conversation is stilted, and soon turns into an argument. The shoulder shoves the wall, but the wall is a linebacker, a mountain, immovable. A scream of frustration melts into the padding, swallowed up by miles and miles of fabric covering four walls with flashes of white, and gray in the corners. _

Wheel and turn, step, step, step, stop. Wheel and turn, step, step, step, step, WHAM! Force meets force, and still the mountain is immovable. It hems him in, inside with the animal that glides behind him, nipping at his heels, sometimes climbing over and inside until he's wearing a second skin…a skin that itches and crawls, leaving silver streaks across his padded shoulders and slivers of glass on the floor, but they leave no mark on his bare feet when he treads on them. He wishes they would. Blood is a sign of pain, something real that he can put a name to, something that he can see and combat. Blood is easily wiped away, but the shards of glass remain, invisible to his eyes, but he knows they are there. 

His nose itches, but his hands are locked at his sides. They clench, and the nails cut into the soft flesh. They don't come near him anymore, and have forgotten to cut his nails, and now they are sharp enough to rend. Something warm pools in his hands, and he smiles. It will stain the padding, and they will be upset. But his nose itches, and it mocks him. Angrily he tosses his head, and another scream is muffled by the four walls of white and gray. Wheel and turn, step, step, step, step, WHAM! Force makes little difference. The padding erases all pain, cutting if off before it begins. His nose should have been broken, dripping crimson, never to itch again. But the padding is a pillow, soft and warm. He wants to pulverize it with his fists, break it, bend it, rip it to shreds…

A noise at the door halts him, and he backs away, his feet sliding nervously across the quilted floor. The door opens, revealing figures clad in white and gray, and there are voices, but one in particular catches hold of his memory. That voice, warm and mellow, oozing with concern. If she cared, she would not have forgotten him, left him to live a waking death in this place. If she cared, she would set him free. If she cared, she would let him close his hands around her beautiful throat and squeeze until her head burst like a balloon, her golden skin purpling under the pressure of his fingers…Anger fades into shame, and something hot pricks the corners of his eyes. He feels it slide down his cheek, and for a moment he is afraid, and feels the animal clawing at his insides, knowing that one tear begets another, until he fades away…But the taste of salt on his tongue releases him, and the fear ebbs away, skulking back into its corner. 

She stands there in front of him now, hands limp at her side, bare and empty. His eyes remain riveted on her relaxed fingers, wishing, hoping, trying to imagine the glass and the metal and the burning blue liquid into being, but…nothing. Her eyes are damp as she gazes at him, and for a moment he is angered again. Angered that she could forget, angered that she would fail when she promised…He can feel it gnawing at him, tearing him apart from the inside out, eating him alive, and he almost allows the rage to take hold, but then he finally sees that her eyes are wet, drowning in their own salt, dammed behind long, curving lashes that slide against her cheeks as she takes a breath and sighs. Trust works both ways. His lips twitch in the beginnings of a smile, something that he has not done in a while, but then the reality of her empty hands hits him again. The fear wells up inside, the fear of being trapped, hunted by his own mind, cornered and left to rot in a landfill for the soul…He can feel it trickling down his back, his legs, over the skin of his hands, through his hair, and finally over his eyes, until the flashes of white fade to shades of gray all over. It encases him, hemming him in, setting him apart. She can't see him, but he can see the growing alarm in her eyes, and it pains him. The silver clings to his body, and he tries to slow the rising tide of fear, but it overwhelms him, crashing over him, swallowing and burying him. His skin itches and crawls, and all he wants is to tear it off, to be free of it…His throat works as a stream of anguished syllables pour from his mouth.

"Get it off me, get if off me, GET IT OFF ME!" he screams as he tries to tear himself apart before it can, before it will consume him…He can feel his body protesting as he slams it against the padding that surrounds him, and he rejoices in the pain that finally assails his shoulder as he feels something click and drop out of place. He can hear her pleading with him to stop, and he can see her figure, faint and hazy and rimmed with light out of the corner of his eye as he whirls and thrashes…But he can't stop. He wants to hear bones split, he wants to rip his skin apart, he wants it to fall away to dot the ground in tiny, broken shards where he can grind it to shimmering dust under his heel. But as the fear and the desperation grow, so does the pain. It knocks at the base of his skull, harder now, and more insistent. The rage is growing. It is no longer isolated to a small aching knot in the back of his mind, where he could at least keep it at bay for most of the time. Now it is skittering and scrambling through his mind, like a live thing, preparing to swarm over him and obliterate him. His mind throbs with the effort to hold it back when all he really wants is to let it go, knowing that it could destroy him once it was set loose. But she is here, and now she is gripping his arm. How she can see him, he does not know, but she is there at his side, coaxing and calling to him, calling him back. The rage swells, and then abruptly fades, withdrawing into the far corner of his mind to wait for a better time. For he is tired, and his body is gaunt and worn, starved from months of pacing about in his little world of white and gray, surrounded by four walls and a ceiling and a floor that springs and bounces, a flexible box that refuses to break open and let him out. 

He collapses slowly into her waiting arms, his slight body nothing now for even her to carry. Tiny shards of silver flake and fall away, and he can see her now as she sees him. She cradles his head in her lap, while she strokes the side of his face with a soothing touch. She is saying something, but he cannot hear what she says. His mind still reels, only now the ache has lodged in his heart. She smiles sadly, and he can see a single tear at the corner of her eye, and then feels something wet on his own cheek, only he is unsure if it is hers or his own.


End file.
